Topics Ethics

Question Do we have a moral duty to demolish the delusions of others? I suspect not. I know many people who, in my opinion, are deluded in their religious and political beliefs, but I steer clear of trying to persuade them to drop these beliefs. If at some point these delusions fail them and leave them in tears, it's not my fault. These are self-inflicted woes, right? I respect the right of others to fool themselves. Now, on a personal level, a girl has decided, without any encouragement on my part, that she would like me for a husband. Unasked, she showers me with gifts but reckons, I feel, that she will be getting them all back, anyway, once we are married. She is pleasant company. I enjoy the gifts. I don't lead her on with false promises. She is self-deluded. One of these days it is all going to end in tears. But I have no more responsibilty for those tears than I do if an acquaintance discovers that his religious sect is a load of bunkum and feels a miserable clown as a result,do I? Well, do I?

Accepted:
July 19, 2012

Comments

The answer to the question you begin with is easy enough: in general, no. No doubt there are exceptions. Spelling them out in a simple a rule would be difficult, but your case isn't a hard one. Feeding someone's false beliefs, especially for one's own advantage and with no regard for the other person's good is wrong.

The reply that you aren't actually supporting her "delusions," as you would call them, but merely not undermining them wouldn't get you off the hook. What you describe is self-serving rather than kind or honest and reducing the question to queries about a duty to undelude ignores that.

As with all such posts in this forum, I have no way of knowing if your question is sincere or if the situation you describe is real. But whatever the case may be, the larger point is that concrete moral situations seldom reduce to a single question, especially when they involve our concrete relationships with other people. Thinking in terms of "duties" is less useful than asking about the decent or the kind or the honest or the helpful thing to do—not to mention about how we would want to be treated if the roles were reversed.

But I suspect you already know that, in spite of the way you verbally jut your jaw in your closing sentences.